The Secret Six is the latest hot jazz band to establish itself in New Orleans, joining in the top tier an exciting roster of groups that formed in the years following Katrina including Tuba Skinny, the Shotgun Jazz Band, and the Smoking Time Jazz Club. There were many others in intervening years but perhaps The Secret Six represent a new wave of creativity following the lockdown shakeup.
They formed as a direct result of the pandemic, which forced the post Katrina jazz revival out of the bars and back to its roots on the street. Musicians need to keep their chops up, and make money, and for normally busy musicians with cabin fever the parks of New Orleans became a 2020 refuge. A few of those musicians, all from other bands, began referring to their busking band as The Secret 6, however many they actually were.
This may be me repeating some sort of lore, but I once heard that when Michael Magro joins a busking band the group will, by deference, refer to themselves as the Loose Marbles. True or not this lore is central to the flowering of New Orleans jazz among young people in the years following Katrina. Started in the parks of New York in the early 2000s, where they left a lasting legacy in similar groups like the Cangelosi Cards and the Baby Soda Jazz Band, the Loose Marbles migrated to New Orleans in 2007. Led by Magro and Ben Polcer they provided a street level boot camp for youn
